CONJUGATED PROTEINS 81 



There is little evidence of the existence of covalent links between 

 lipid and protein. 



The two types of conjugated protein considered here very 

 briefly are, to a certain extent, representative of conjugated 

 proteins in general. The prosthetic group may be soluble or in- 

 soluble in water; it may be a monomer of comparatively simple 

 structure, a mixture of monomers, or a macromolecule having 

 itself a complicated structure and being capable of an intricate 

 sequential specificity. As may have been gathered from what I 

 said before, I consider the principle of conjugation as the main 

 process through which nature makes big things bigger and small 

 things big. Size, in compounds participating in the Hfe of the cell, 

 is probably not an accident. Moreover, such processes of pre- 

 determined aggregation may be one of the ways in which what 

 sometimes is stupidly referred to as the "assembly line" is realized 

 in the living cell. The models of which we can conceive are 

 probably no more than an absurd caricature of the synthetic 

 mechanisms, a multiplicity of templates in space and templates 

 in time, through which the organism maintains patterns of this 

 high degree of complexity, unless we assume (and there is no 

 reason for that) that what is duplicated is not really a duplicate. 



Romantic deduction has done much harm in the sciences. But 

 the use, the almost unpredictable use, of iniagination is an es- 

 sential element in the operations of the human mind. The injunc- 

 tion not to be astonished — nil admirari — is one of the most stupid 

 legacies of antiquity. When we consider this ever-repeated giant 

 throw of dice, this internally regulated cataract of reactions, 

 sequences, and products, our first response must be a deep 

 astonishment at a chaotic regularity which has thus far defied 

 our understanding. Eternal surprise is the engine that drives the 

 searching intellect. Let us hope that the coming generations will 

 not have lost the ability to wonder about the many meanings of 

 these palimpsests of nature. 



